Beginning of the End (1957)

July 4, 1957

Screen: Serio-Comic; Jerry Lewis Stars in 'Delicate Delinquent'

By BOSLEY CROWTHER

Published: July 4, 1957

WITH plainly the best of intentions, Jerry Lewis has made his first independent production a serious-message comedy. It is called "The Delicate Delinquent." It came to the Mayfair yesterday and the message is that it is better to be a respected policeman than a juvenile bum.

If there appears in this presentment a certain sobriety that was not a detectable feature in the old Dean Martin-Jerry Lewis films, it may be respectfully acknowledged as a purpose of the new Mr. Lewis. But it also must be discovered as the cause of an unevenness in this film. Mr. Lewis, as the star of his own picture, runs a gamut from Hamlet to clown.

As a lonely (and looney) janitor in a third-rate apartment house, where he shelters himself from the delinquents that prowl the neighborhood, he ranges around a bumpy circuit of up-and-down slapstick comedy, blubbering pathos, stalwart heroics and dramatic solemnity. At one point, he is bouncing madly in a trick mechanical bed; at another, he is pouring his heart out in a singing soliloquy. (The song he sings is "I Go My Way By Myself," which was sung in "The Bandwagon" by Fred Astaire.)

Eventually, Mr. Lewis finds himself sponsored by a friendly cop in the neighborhood as a candidate for the police force and a student at the police academy. And here, for a few happy minutes, he does straighten out in a groove of uninterrupted farce clowning that is the most joyous stretch in the whole film.

Mr. Lewis warding off a judo wrestler or trying to fit odd-shaped blocks into odd-shaped holes is a delirious comedian. Mr. Lewis trying hard to act a man, with a policeman's hat planted on his noggin, is a mite incredible and absurd. The good intention of his message may be missed in this eccentricity.

This is the trouble with the picture, written and directed by Don McGuire. It fails to concentrate the actor's comic talents. It lacks consistency. Mr. Lewis is not yet a Charlie Chaplin, though he may aim to be.

Supporting him earnestly and fairly are Darren McGavin as the friendly cop, Horace McMahon as a police captain and Robert Ivers and Richard Bakalyan as juvenile hoods. Martha Hyer is also in there punching as a beauty who cottons to the cop.

Mr. Lewis' initial venture is distributed by his old studio, Paramount.

AS for "Beginning of the End," it certainly sounded that way yesterday at the Paramount. A rock 'n' roll stage revue and a demonstrative, to put it mildly, audience produced a clamor loud enough to wake the dead.

On the screen, an army of giant screeching grasshoppers ravenously ate its way across country as far as Chicago (only to be decoyed into Lake Michigan). Times Square, two and a half hours later, seemed quiet to the point of eeriness.

A picture such as this fantasy thriller, featuring Peggie Castle, Peter Graves and Morris Ankrum, always poses three questions. First, of course, is it truly frightening? Yes, for about twenty minutes. Are the technical boys on their toes? Same answer, until the grasshoppers and the low budget, both, get pretty transparent. Finally, is there any saving sensibility or bolstering factual approach? No.

Produced and directed by Bert I. Gordon and written by Fred Freiberger and Lester Gorn, this strictly second-rate entry can't hold a candle, for instance, to a somewhat similar entry, "Them" (all about ants).

The opening sequences are quite effective indeed, with a small Illinois hamlet simply disappearing off the map (unseen), as a reporter, Miss Castle, and a botanist, Mr. Graves, prod Mr. Ankrum's Army unit toward speedier investigation. We guarantee that the first glimpse of a scout for the towering, tendrilled horde (who devoured radioactive plants), will unnerve anybody. Most of the time, the principals crouch in various corners until the lumbering locusts swarm across miniature sets depicting Chicago and into good old Lake Michigan.

How are the creatures lured into the water? "Ever been duck hunting?" Mr. Graves asks Mr. Ankrum, in a brainstorm, getting out a recording machine. A final query: will the ducks try to take over the next time?